Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor: Essays on Life and Lineage by white Women

by Lisa Iversen (Editor)

Overview

"A timely and thoughtful discussion about the intersection of gender and White privilege." -Kirkus Reviews

Selected by the editors of Kirkus Reviews as one of the featured Indie titles in their 11/15/20 magazine issue, a recognition extended to less than 10% of their reviewed new works.

Using the lens of inherited trauma and family history, Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor offers a hopeful, humanizing path for dismantling whiteness. 

For over two decades, family constellations facilitator and therapist Lisa Iversen has been working with groups, including descendants of ancestors who have perpetrated harm or been victimized in circumstances of injustice. In this collection of essays, she brings together twelve white women who explore the role of whiteness in collective movements of immigration, colonialism, slavery, and war. Through genealogical research, family documents, and deep reflection, these writers from the US, Canada, and the UK disentangle themes of innocence, grief, race, privilege, and belonging in their families and ancestries. 

Each essayist shares moving stories and anecdotes from their life, adding historical and cultural context to current conversations about white women's role in creating and sustaining whiteness. 

"This collection of 12 personal essays represents brave explorations of their relationships to whiteness via different aspects of their histories and heritages. The essays provide a fascinating look at whiteness through the lenses of American racism and Jewish Americans; the Swiss and Nazi collaborations; displacement by war; relationship to unceded tribal Native lands; and German ethnicity and reparations. This book is a good reminder for Americans that whiteness may be expressed differently depending on the country and culture, but has always been associated with privilege and oppression."  -Patricia L. Dawson, MD, PhD, FACS, Medical Director, Office of Healthcare Equity, UW Medicine 

Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor will appeal to those ready to engage with the difficult truths of history, those interested in healing collective historic trauma and dismantling racism, therapists and family counselors, and all concerned about the fate of democratic nations sourced in whiteness. Each essay includes sources and resources for more information.

Essays by Sonya Lea, Karin Konstantynowicz, Anne Hayden, Summer Starr, Kate Regan, June BlueSpruce, Sabine Olsen, Carole Harmon, Christina Greené, Sharon Halfnight, Una Suseli O'Connell, Pam Emerson. Edited and Foreword by Lisa Iversen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781735305011
Publisher:	CAB Publishing
Publication date:	10/13/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	188
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Lisa received her Masters in Social Work from the University of Washington in 1992. Her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and English, with a minor in Women's Studies, is from the University of Minnesota (1986). She has been a practicing psychotherapist in the Pacific Northwest since 1993 and facilitating Systemic and Family Constellations since 1999. From 2008-2015 she co-hosted the radio show, "Life Conversations presents Ancestral Blueprints" with Atlanta-based host Adé Anifowose and Ombassa Sophera. She is the author of the book, Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America's Soul, a psychotherapist's reflections on individual-collective healing, ancestors, US history, and democracy. Her TedxTalk (2015) explores her perspective that the US was created out of disconnection from family. While actively connected to her Minnesota roots, Lisa now creates home with her husband and their daughter in the Pacific Northwest where she directs the Center for Ancestral Blueprints. www.lisaiversen.com www.ancestralblueprints.com

Table of Contents

Foreword by Lisa Iversen

Contextualizes the anthology in over twenty years of professional practice in family constellations facilitation and therapy, working with descendants of those who have perpetrated harm or been victimized by injustice.

Bloodlines: A Legal Lynching and a Family's Reckoning by Sonya Lea

Tells the story of the last public lynching in Kentucky and the author's ancestors' role in that event -- unpacks the implications for her, as a white Southern woman, in the oppression of Black men.

Roots, Borders, and Belonging by Karin Konstantynowicz

Explores the author's personal identity and struggle to feel belonging as the daughter of WWII refugees living in Canada, navigating both the pain of otherness and the invisibility of whiteness.

In The Shadow of Mt. Evans: Living in a Lineage of Genocide, White Privilege, and Intergenerational Healing by Anne Hayden

Explores Colorado Governor John Evans' role in the infamous 1864 Sand Creek Massacre of Arapahoe and Cheyenne people -- traces the author's path of healing her family's legacy of inherited shame.

Whiteness in Colonial America: My Family's Legacy by Summer Starr

Traces the author's family to seventeenth century Puritan colonizers in Massachusetts and Virginia and confronts the blind spots in her understanding of U.S. history that her whiteness has allowed her to uphold.

Not So Nice: Confessions of an "Innocent" White Woman by Kate Regan, PhD

Disentangles niceness, goodness, and innocence on a 'journey of the soul into white identity' during her decades-long exploration of her mentor's question, 'what impact did gender and race have on your experience of life?'

Warning: Whiteness May Be Hazardous To Your Health by June BlueSpruce

Explores the racism inherent in the field of western medicine -- from academia to healthcare practices & outcomes -- through the author's experience as a nurse and the stories of generations of doctors in her lineage.

It Cannot Be Condoned: Whiteness and the Legacy of War by Sabine Olsen

Recounts the author's upbringing in post-WWII Germany, visibility of collective healing & atonement, and the role of silence and speech in expression of white supremacy.

In Mountain Light: Walking With My Grandfather by Carole Harmon

Contemplates the author's relationship with the photographic and filmmaking work of her grandfather, which both documented and promoted the colonization of tribal lands in the creation of Canada's National Parks.

Weltschmerz by Christina Greené

Addresses the alienation and dislocation that befalls descendants when families don't 'talk about it' -- in the author's lineage, this was the trauma suffered by her Ukrainian grandmother, a survivor of Soviet genocide.

White Walking by Sharon Halfnight

Reflects on themes of birth, whiteness, modernity, and colonialism through a lens of 'edge-walking' -- explores harm caused by whiteness to the author, her fellow humans, and the environment.

The Cuckoo That Laid the Golden Egg: The Legacy of Nazi Gold in Switzerland by Una Suseli O'Connell

Reveals an uncomfortable parallel between the author's Swiss family's obsession with gold as the quintessential protector and Switzerland's history of laundering Nazi gold, the shadow side of its 'neutrality.'

Leaving Mitzrayim by Pam Emerson

Disentangles threads of persecution, assimilation into whiteness, the collusion of white supremacy with internalized antisemitism, and the spiritual territory of healing and collective liberation.

Editorial Reviews

"...well written...poignant and often raw...A timely and thoughtful discussion about the intersection of gender and White privilege." - Kirkus Reviews

"A daring and willing look into identity and the structure of whiteness in family, communities, and history. When we ask what the stories are underneath what we carry, sometimes we have to change our lives." - Lidia Yuknavitch, national bestselling author of Verge and The Chronology of Water

"Healing from trauma requires the whole trauma story & that requires the voice of the perpetrator which has largely been missing. These essays are a wonderful primer...in how to search your heart for the truths within your family and history...so that you & others might heal and work toward justice." - Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD, author of Journey Through Trauma

"The essays that this group of soulful women have written provide a glimmer of possibility that we can re-humanize ourselves...I saw new pathways I could travel. People of color need us to find our way back home. So do we." - Katrina Browne, producer/director, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North

"...a much-needed conversation that begins from a place of acknowledgment of white hegemony. This collection of layered and nuanced essays fills me with hope for the real and honest dialogue...this revolutionary anthology serves as both a rallying cry and a guide to the reckoning necessary for meaningful change." - Huda Al-Marashi, author of First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story

"With compassion and grace, [these writers] bear witness to the ways in which they have benefited from the systemic racism that plagues our society. Their reckonings, full of pain, love, and new awareness...point the way toward a better future for us all." - Priscilla Long, author of Fire and Stone: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

From the Publisher

2020-09-03
A collection of essays offers the reflections of 13 White women grappling with their own racial privilege and family histories.

In this book, Iversen complements her research on collective and family trauma in Ancestral Blueprints (2009). She provides readers with a dozen essays by White women, most of whom live in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, who contemplate their complicity in systemic racism. “Bringing visibility to both perpetrators and victims of injustice,” writes the editor, “is necessary to heal inheritances of collective trauma.” In particular, these essays focus on how “indoctrination in the innocence of white womanhood meant relying on white men to be solely responsible for the perpetrator roles of humanity” while ignoring the ways in which White women benefited from White supremacy. Many of the women’s family histories include relatives both directly and indirectly involved in specific acts of racial violence. The grandparents of one essayist, for example, were present at a “legal lynching” of a Black man in Owensboro, Kentucky, who had been hastily convicted by an all-White jury for the rape and murder of a White woman. Another contributor is a descendant of Colorado Territorial Gov. John Evans, who was forced to resign due to his role in the Sand Creek massacre of over 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho. Other contributors include the children of European immigrants from working-class families who benefited from their Whiteness in their new homeland. Collectively, these essays are not just well written, but also poignant and often raw in their acknowledgment of the ways in which their authors have personally benefited from both White privilege and the myth of innocence surrounding White women. Most essays also conclude with a list of resources and sources that will be useful to others interested in exploring historical and contemporary Whiteness. Though this book takes the important first step in acknowledging how the past continues to benefit White women in the present, there is not much provided in terms of practical solutions geared toward not just reconciliation, but racial justice and reparations as well.

A timely and thoughtful discussion about the intersection of gender and White privilege. (acknowledgements)

Kirkus Reviews